Never Too Busy for Compassion

 DD#2 called me on Monday, and asked if I had any quilts made that had a lot of florals. I'm not big on florals, so unfortunately the answer was no. I asked her why, and she told me that a friend was just put on hospice and she loves florals. Can I just say cancer sucks? This woman is very young, I think late 20's, and a newlywed to boot. DD#2 is going up to see her this weekend. Am I busy? Yes. Do I have a quilt she can have? Yes, but it's not the right quilt. The thing is, I had some fabric on the way with which I was planning on making a floral quilt, but it was scheduled to arrive Wednesday afternoon. That wasn't going to give me enough time to get the quilt done before DD#2 needed it on Friday. I pulled out a colorful quilt to give her, but I wasn't satisfied. 

Tuesday morning I started the day by binding two of the table toppers for the rally. All seven are quilted now, but I've only bound those two. When I came upstairs from the basement, it was only 7AM, and I had a package outside my front door. Now I want to make this clear, I've lived in this house for 20 years, and I order online a LOT. I have NEVER received a package so early in the morning. I grabbed the package and opened it, it was the solid fabric bundle I had been expecting Wednesday afternoon, but here is was, early Tuesday morning. Hmmm, Tuesday morning, could I get it done by Friday midday? 

I had seen a photo of a quilt online that had inspired me to order that fat quarter bundle. I'm not usually one to work with pastels, but I had seen a photo of a quilt where each solid was paired with a floral of the same color. I really liked the quilt, and since it's much different than anything I've been working on, I thought it would be a fun experiment. Now I've got the solids, should I attempt to make a quilt in just a couple days? I decided it would do no harm to look in my stash and see if I had a floral to match each fat quarter. Now remember, I'm not a floral girl, nor am I into pastels, so anything I had was likely going to be something that came in a bundle or was given to me. It only took me about about 30 minutes to find a floral to go with each of the 20 solids in the bundle, I was shocked at how easily it came together. Some of the florals were the only florals I had in those colors, yet somehow they worked. It was meant to be. 

I don't have much time, and now I'm working with 40 fat quarters. First up, press them all. While I'm pressing I decide to make HST's like the quilt I saw, but because of time, I need to make them large. I decided to go for 8" HST's. Everyone has their favorite way to make HST's, and since I don't want to waste any fabric, I decided to use the EZ Angle ruler, I have three sizes of EZ angle ruler, and the largest one would work. I cut an 8.5" strip from each of the 40 fat quarters, then matching the floral and the matching solid right sides together, I cut the HST's. Turns out I could get 4 HST's from the strips from each pair of the fat quarters. That gave me 80 HST's set 8x10 for a quilt that measures 64"x80" That will work. I got all the HST's cut and sewn, pressed and snipped the dog ears all before DH got home from work. That evening I actually cut up the rest of the fat quarters, I'll be making another quilt from 6" HST's, again set 8x10 for a 48" x 60" quilt. All the scraps I cut into 2" strips for what I hope will make a baby quilt. I think that's the first time I've ever cut up 40 fat quarters so quickly for different quilts. 

Tuesday evening I also got the HST's up on the design wall. I knew I had no time to keep rearranging them, so since I had 4 of each colorway. I divided them into four identical stacks, then laid the quilt out by quadrant. 

I was pretty happy with it, and I knew having it laid out would make assembling it easier on Wednesday. 

Wednesday. I need to get this assembled and basted today. I had ONE wideback that would work with these colors. Remember I don't do pastels. It was amazing I had one at all. Sure I could have pieced a backing, but time is at a premium here. Assembling an 80 block quilt isn't that hard, so I was done before lunch, and then since DH was off, I had him help me layer the backing, batting and quilt top so I could pin baste it. I'm very blessed to have a sewing machine with a 13" throat, so I decided to lightly baste the quilt since I'd be quilting immediately, and the Warm and Natural batting I used clings pretty well to the fabrics. I only put one pin in each block, and two in each block on the edges. Since I got it basted so quickly, I decided to start quilting that same day. Time to choose thread. I vaguely recalled having a pastel variegated thread. I only purchased it because it was a buy three spools get three spools free sale, and they were out of the colors I wanted. Do I still have it? Yes I do.

How am I going to quilt this? I was originally thinking I might just have to stitch in the ditch or meander because of time constraints. All those solids are really going make the quilting show. All the flowery designs I know take too much time to quilt out. How about leaves? Those don't take too long, especially if I make them larger. 

That will do. I quilt for an hour on Wednesday afternoon, and my arm is a bit sore so I stop for the day and do nothing the rest of the day. Today is Thursday, and I really need to finish this today. Since I quilt by timer all the time, I knew with an easy quilting pattern I can usually quilt a twin sized quilt in four hours. This is a little smaller than a twin, so maybe a little less. I start quilting as soon as DH leaves for work, it's still dark outside. I quilt for an hour then make myself take a two hour break. By break, I mostly mean unloading and loading the dishwasher and making a grocery list! Still, it gives my arm a bit of a break. I go back to quilting and by going over my hour by about ten minutes, I finish the quilting! Time to trim the quilt and choose binding. 

I really want to use a gingham, and I like the green the best, even though all of them match. After another break for my arm, I machine sew on the binding, and toss the finished quilt in the washer. 53 hours from start to finish. Not something I could do on a regular basis. My arm is pretty sore, and I rarely make a quilt with such large pieces. The thing is, I'm satisfied. I can't cure cancer, but maybe I can show some compassion and bring some comfort to an awful situation. 

Do I still have a list of projects with tight deadlines? Yup, and that's OK. If I'm ever too busy to show someone compassion, I'm too busy. If you ever need a quick quilt, I can tell you from experience large HST's work up fast. 

Fresh from the dryer, I'll drop it off at DD#2's tonight. 

Pro-craft-ination

 I've been doing things, just not what I should be doing. It would have been nice if I had finished the table toppers for the rally this week,  but at least progress was made. All of them are basted, two of them are even quilted. They need to be finished before November 11,  so I still have time, right???

One of my grandsons really wants a space-themed quilt for his birthday in November. Yesterday I finally started dealing with that.  I cut the panel I'm starting with to size, evaluated how much of each fabric I have and realistically looked at how much time I have. I spent yesterday afternoon with EQ8, and came up with an easy quilt to make up, only ten blocks to piece then lots of wide borders to show off the space fabrics I splurged on. It's definitely not my usual style, but it's the best chance I have of getting the quilt done on time. Finished is better than perfect.

I would have preferred using an orange as the border around the panel instead of that teal, but this particular grandson is not an orange fan. I auditioned several blues and they all fell flat. I tried a lime green like in the last border and there just isn't enough lime green on the other fabric to make it look right. There is more contrast in real life than in the photo, but after looking at the photo on my computer screen instead of on my phone, I think I'll audition a gold and a purple fabric before I cut that first border. He's not a yellow fan either, so maybe I'll just audition purple.  I hope to make final selections and cut at least all the borders today. The outside border is from a border print that I've already fussy cut down into border strips. This grandson's favorite color is pink, and I had three space prints with a lot of pink. One of them had satellites and such in too large a scale to use in a border.  The other was mostly stars in a galaxy type print, but Mr. LJ prefers planets, so I opted to use the planet fabric. I think I'll make him a pillowcase out of the galaxy fabric, plus use it in the star blocks I'll be making.

So what have I been doing with most of my time? Working on UFO's. I have a scary amount of UFO's at block stage, needing to be assembled. In the last week I've sewn eight quilts into rows. Only one of those had the rows sewn together.

The nice thing is, none of the quilts I'm in the middle of assembling need borders, so once I get all the rows sewn together, I'll have a stack of new quilt tops for the quilting queue. (Not that I didn't already have plenty in the quilting queue ;-) 

I'm not often in the mood to assemble a bunch of quilts, so when the mood strikes, I try to run with it even when I should be doing other things. 

Yesterday while designing the space quilt I was feeling less than "stellar", and this morning I found out why. Turns out I have covid. This is my fourth time having Covid, and I've had really mild cases each time, and I'm hoping that holds true this time. Since DH works in a hospital I'm probably lucky I've only caught it once a year. I think in the last four years the only time I was sick besides covid is when I caught a stomach bug from space quilt grandson! This is definitely the longest stretch I've ever gone without a cold. 

I'll just keep doing what I can, when I can. I work pretty well under pressure, so I'm not too worried about getting things done at this point. I think I can probably do it. 

Just Sad

 This has been a really tough week.  My best friend of 36+ years passed away.  She lives far from me, but I was still the last to talk to her. It was quite unexpected, which is always a reminder that none of us know how much time we have on this earth. 

I didn't get much done on the sewing front, because sewing wasn't high on my priority list this. week. 

I am just now starting to get the table toppers for the rally sewn together. I have to make seven, and so far I've assembled two. Since I need the design wall for those, I've not assembled any of the quilt tops I've made blocks for.  I keep looking for UFO's I can use as leader/enders, and I found another one that I'm using now. It will be a vertical row quilt, and I can assemble the rows easily enough as leaders/enders. 

The timing of my friend's death was a bit interesting in one aspect. I've already been thinking about next year's quilting goals, and I had already decided my main focus was to make the remaining family members who don't have a quilt from me, a quilt. I have one niece and three nephews that haven't received a quilt from me. I also have a SIL without a quilt. Those four quilts are on my to-do list for next year. I've already chosen fabrics and patterns for all of them, and one is partially cut. I had been thinking about my own mortality, and who I would regret not making a quilt for. My friend's death just cemented in my mind that that is a good goal for next year. I still have a few deadline quilts on my list, and UFO's are another area I'd like to make serious progress on. 

I did have two grandkids this week as planned. They were a good distraction for me, and I was thankful that it still worked out to have them. It was a week of sadness, gratitude, and reflection.

30 Minutes at a Time

I did get DD#2's quilt done before her birthday! OK, so it was the day before her birthday, but I made the deadline! This is finish #22 for the year!

She's been wanting a quilt with a minky backing. and she loved the color of the evergreen I backed a baby quilt with a while back. Minky's not my favorite to quilt, so it's a good thing I like my kid! 

I've got my version of this quilt ready for borders, but I haven't touched it in a couple weeks. Mine will be backed with flannel which is still cozy but easier on my arm.

Since I had grandkids for 10 days and little sewing time, I just wanted something easy and quick to work on while the grands were having quiet time. I started looking through my already started or cut projects to see if something fit the bill. 

I've had the small blocks for this done for quite a while. I decided to sew the small blocks into four patches, so I'd have bigger blocks and the quilt would be easier to assemble. Anytime I'm making a quilt without sashing that has even numbered rows and columns, I find this makes the final assembly quicker. Now I've got a pile of these bigger blocks ready to have their turn on the design wall.

These blocks I cut out last year. It's Bonnie Hunter's Triple Treat leader/ender challenge. I didn't end up making them as leaders/enders, but they were a good easy project to sew during quiet time when I could be interrupted at any moment. Now I've got all these big blocks ready for the design wall as well. 

I decided I could get a little bit of cutting done while the kids were awake, so I processed some scraps that had been languishing, and I decided to cut up the leftover pieces of wideback fabric I had from the latest quilts I basted. 

Wideback scraps I treat differently than other scraps. Even if it's just 6" wide, if it's 108" long, that's quite a bit of fabric. If I have a 6" strip left on all four sides after basting, it really starts adding up. When I have those big long scraps, I look through my UFO's and scrap projects to see if there is a way I can use the leftover wideback to finish up a UFO. For example, my projects often stall when I get the blocks done if I want to sash them and I didn't cut the sashing. So, for me, a good question is would this match a quilt that needs sashing. 

I also make a lot of four patches with 2" cut squares. If I want to use a solid alternating block with those, I can get 30 3.5" squares from just a 3.5" strip of 108" fabric. If I have more than one strip that length, I can get a kids quilt out of that pretty quickly when alternating with scrappy four patches. 

I had been using 16 patches as my leader/enders for about 6 months, and I had yet to do anything with them. I don't think I found them all, but I did find 240 of them. I didn't want to make huge quilts, so I decided to break those 240 into 3 groups of 80. One set is very girly, one set is boyish, and the last set is a mixture. I looked at my wideback scraps, and decided I had enough to make three quilts in an offset layout. 

I only had to cut the widebacks into two sizes so I could sash two sides of each 16 patch. This turquoise will be the sashing for one quilt. I've got all the turquoise blocks to this point. I'll be sewing them into four patches before final assembly.

The light teal wideback scraps I had became the sashing for another quilt. I've got all the bigger blocks of these done, so it's ready for the design wall as well.

I'm just starting on the last quilt, and it will have gray sashing, again from leftover wideback. Since the 16 patches are scrappy, and I'm planning to donate the final quilts anyway, it's not an issue that I'm making them them same way. 

I'm really in the mood to tackle some UFO's, but I still have deadline projects to get done as well. I knew I'd need a couple days to decompress after so long with young ones in the house, and I thought we'd be child free between now and the scooter rally. Turns out I was wrong, and we'll actually have two other grandkids for a couple nights next week. These are some of the older ones and they are much less work! Family always comes first, but I'll likely be able to do a bit while we have them anyway. 

Next deadlines are table runners for the rally and a quilt due in November. DH decided to go with fewer tables so now I only need to make 7 table runners, and the blocks are done. I need to cut the setting triangles, assemble and quilt them. The quilt I haven't started, nor even designed yet! It's starting with a panel though, and I've got novelty fabrics for it, so likely I'll opt for large pieces and not a bunch of little bits. 

I think I'll start working on assembling the table runners this weekend. I'll move the other projects along as I can. I also would like to get the borders on my Christmas quilt. Once the top is done I can baste it when either I have another deadline quilt to baste or if I finish quilting the ones I basted a couple weeks ago. It's not a big deal if my quilt gets finished soon or not, but if I can fit it in, I'd like to. 

It's nice to know that even small chunks of time add up, and even though I haven't finished a quilt top. I've moved several UFO's along a step.